Merry? No doubt Ricky Guy will gladly put the word before Christmas on Tuesday.

But one simple word placed before the name of the day celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, to whom he prayed over and over the past two years, just won’t do the trick.

“Best Christmas of my life,” said the 52-year-old guy, a Memphis High School teacher. “And it has nothing to do with presents. I now cherish life. I don’t take anything for granted. I’m with my family. I’m alive.”

At 6-foot-9, a former Texas Tech basketball player who played against Clyde Drexler and the famous Phi Slama Jama Univeristy of Houston team, a man skilled in the art of driving a golf ball to parts of courses even some PGA pros can’t touch, alive has never been an issue for Guy.

Until that January day in 2010. Guy was in his 27th-year of coaching basketball, this game as the Memphis High boys head coach for a road game at Clarendon.

Guy had felt crummy for quite some time. This day was different. Sort of like having the flu times 10. More than the fatigue, his fear was the feeling of suffocating.

After arriving at his Memphis home he tried to sleep it off. The sleep never arrived. So he drove himself in snowy conditions the 30 miles to a hospital in Childress.

Next thing Guy knew he was being airlifted to Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo, his life changed forever.

Weeks of testing in Amarillo and Dallas determined Guy had suffered a virus attack to the two lower chambers of his heart. The condition left him eventually with a blood flow “at five percent,” Guy said. “A normal heart should be pumping blood from 60 to 65 percent, That tells you your heart is barely pushing blood. What brought on the virus, they still have no clue.”

Guy returned to work at Memphis High — his alma mater, Class of 1978 — that spring. The big guy known for his upbeat attitude was awaiting the unthinkable, a heart transplant.

By the summer of 2010 Guy accepted his life-long passion for coaching basketball was no longer an option. He would continue to teach, but “just walking to the mailbox and back I’d have to stop and rest,” Guy said.

By early October 2010, Guy was now nearing expert status in medical lingo from his many visits with Amarillo cardiologist Dr. Monte Slatton and Dallas-area cardiologist Dr. Todd Dewey.

Dewey asked Guy if he would allow a surgery for a Left Ventricular Assist Device to help treat his heart disease.

Guy wasn’t sure about this surgery. Who wants to carry around a bag with a battery-operated device everywhere you go? The positives? The LVAD would help Guy’s blood flow, put his heart at rest and help his overall quality of life before the possible transplant.

“I’ll be honest,” Guy said. “When Dr. Dewey, who is a tremendous man and surgeon, told me about the LVAD, I thought this is it. I saw the LVAD and freaked. I was scared I might die.”

Guy also looked at the chilling facts.

His weight had dropped from 270 pounds to 204. Sure, he was getting through a day of teaching, but those eight hours took all the energy he could muster.

Forget my fears, he told himself. I trust, respect and love this Dr. Dewey, he said in a in the personal pep talk.

Guy opted for the surgery and his energy improved tremendously. Along with the boost came a surprise opportunity.

The line inserted in Guy for the LVAD does not allow right-handed golfers to swing a club because of where it’s located.

“My wife, Becky, was talking to Dr. Dewey and told him, ‘I’d had my coaching stripped from me, all my sports, please don’t take away his golf away from him,’ ” Guy explained. “Dr. Dewey said there would be no problem if he was left-handed. He could put the drive line in the front of his stomach where he could swing a club. My wife smiled and said, ‘He is left-handed.’

“I’m going to tell you if it hadn’t been for my wife, Becky, by my side through this I would have never made it. You can’t do something like this without a caring, loving wife. My wife sacrificed everything. She’s an unbelievable lady”

Still, half of Guy’s heart was dead. For 22 months he and the bag supporting the LVAD became inseparable. “I called it my side hip,” Guy said.

Until ... “11:49 a.m. on August 9, 2012. That’s when I got the call.”

Minutes matter when you are a person awaiting one of the 2,000 (according to the National Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network) heart transplants performed each year in the U.S.

Minutes matter when you have prayed every day asking for this exact opportunity. At 11:49 a.m. that Aug, 9 day a shout of joy echoed throughout Memphis, Texas.

“That was answered prayer from God. A miracle. I felt God’s faith,” said Guy, whose required donor was a male at least 6-feet tall with blood type B-plus or B-minus. “I also shouted out. I felt like I was going to go into cardiac arrest right there I was so hyped up.”

Within an half hour, Guy’s wife and Richard Coon, a gracious private pilot, had arrived in Memphis to pick up Ricky and take him to Medical City Hospital in Dallas.

By 11 p.m. Dr. Dewey started the heart replacement surgery. Six hours later, Guy had received the heart of a 21-year-old man who died in a boating accident.

In early September, following a remarkably fast recovery, Guy surprised Memphis students at a pep rally, pumping up the football team.

He received a standing ovation as he walked in the gym.

“I’m telling you that standing ovation send cold chills down me,” Guy said. “It was an unbelievable feeling to let them know I had been blessed by God and my donor. I told them I bleed black and gold and I’m a true Cyclone. That’s one of the most joyful moments I’ve had, speaking to that pep rally.”

Memphis High principal is Dick Hutcherson, a 1976 MHS graduate who grew up playing Little League baseball and football with Guy.

He witnessed Guy’s fight to find energy each day. They talked in office about his fears.

“Ricky was pretty strong in his faith to begin with,” Hutcherson said. “But this made him even stronger. When he came back it was like he had new life, of course. The pep rally when he received a standing ovation he thanked everybody and told everybody how blessed he is to be able to live again.

“He just enjoys every day to the fullest. He has a new outlook. The kids love going into his class. Not that they didn’t before, but he was so tired.

“Until you get to the point (where) you are fixin’ to die, it’s like if I ever get better I’m going to do this and that. He is doing this and that.”

It’s more than a little bit obvious Guy has a new lease on life.

Yes, that was Ricky Guy at Wellington the other day officiating a basketball game.

“He looked great,” said Wellington football coach Wade Williams, who knew of Guy’s plight. “I couldn’t believe it was him. But he was smiling and doing a great job.”

Guy will celebrate Christmas day in Amarillo with his family. But he will have two Christmases this season.

In early January, Guy and his family are scheduled to meet his donor’s family over a meal in Irving.

“I look at life in a whole different manner,” Guy said. “When I wake up in the morning and say my prayers, I thank God for giving me another day of life. We need to all understand that your health can be taken from you in the blink of an eye.”

A Merry Christmas?

That’s a sure thing for Ricky Guy.

He will tell you merry and certainly much more, from the bottom of his heart.